CHAPTER III
THE PRIMARY GLORY
The next day at the Green Dragon was a busy one. Mrs. and Mr. Benbow were up betimes, banging casks about in the cellar. When Hieronymus Howard came down to breakfast, he found that they had brought three barrels into the kitchen, and that one was already half full of some horrible brown liquid, undergoing the process of fermentation. He felt himself much aggrieved that he was unable to contribute his share of work to the proceedings. It was but little comfort to him that he was again allowed to attend to the customers. The pouring out of the beer had lost its charm for him.
"It is a secondary glory to pour out the beer," he grumbled. "I aspire to the primary glory of helping to make the beer."
Mrs. Benbow was heaping on the coal in the furnace. She turned round and looked at the disconsolate figure.
"There is one thing you might do," she said. "I've not half enough barm. There are two or three places where you might call for some; and between them all perhaps you'll get enough."
She then mentioned three houses, Farmer Hammond's being among the number.
"Very likely the Hammonds would oblige us," she said. "They are neighborly folk. They live at the Malt-House Farm, two miles off. You can't carry the jar, but you can take the perambulator and wheel it back. I've often done that when I had much to carry."
Hieronymus Howard looked doubtfully at the perambulator.
"Very well," he said submissively. "I suppose I shall only look like an ordinary tramp. It seems to be the fashion to tramp on this road!"
It never entered his head to rebel. The great jar was lifted into the perambulator, and Hieronymus wheeled it away, still keeping up his dignity, though under somewhat trying circumstances.
"I rather wish I had not mentioned anything about primary glory," he remarked to himself. "However, I will not faint by the wayside; Mrs. Benbow is a person not lightly to be disobeyed. In this respect she reminds me distinctly of Queen Elizabeth, or Margaret of Anjou, with just a dash of Napoleon Bonaparte!"
So he walked on along the highroad. Two or three tramps passed him, wheeling similar perambulators, some heaped up with rags and old tins and umbrellas, and occasionally a baby; representing the sum total of their respective possessions in the world. They looked at him with curiosity, but no pleasantry passed their lips. There was nothing to laugh at in Hieronymus' appearance; there was a quiet dignity about him which was never lost on any one. His bearing tallied with his character, the character of a mellowed human being. There was a restfulness about him which had soothed more than one tired person; not the restfulness of stupidity, but the repose only gained by those who have struggled through a great fever to a great calm. His was a clean-shaven face; his hair was iron-gray. There was a kind but firm expression about his mouth, and a suspicion of humor lingering in the corners. His eyes looked at you frankly. There seemed to be no self-consciousness in his manner; long ago, perhaps, he had managed to get away from himself. He enjoyed the country, and stopped more than once to pick some richly tinted leaf, or some tiny flower nestling in the hedge. He confided all his treasures to the care of the perambulator. It was a beautiful morning, and the sun lit up the hills, which were girt with a belt of many gems: a belt of trees, each rivaling the other in colored luxuriance. Hieronymus sang. Then he turned down a lane to the left and found some nuts. He ate these, and went on his way again, and at last found himself outside a farm of large and important aspect. A man was stacking a hayrick. Hieronymus watched him keenly.
"Good gracious!" he exclaimed; "I wish I could do that. How on earth do you manage it? And did it take you long to learn?"
The man smiled in the usual yokel fashion, and went on with his work. Hieronymus plainly did not interest him.
"Is this the Malt-House Farm?" cried Hieronymus lustily.
"What else should it be?" answered the man.
"These rural characters are inclined to be one-sided," thought Hieronymus, as he opened the gate and wheeled the perambulator into the pretty garden. "It seems to me that they are almost as narrow-minded as the people who live in cities and pride themselves on their breadth of view. Almost-but on reflection, not quite!"
He knocked at the door of the porch, and a great bustling woman opened it. He explained his mission to her, and pointed to the jar for the barm.
"You would oblige Mrs. Benbow greatly, ma'am," he said. "In fact, we cannot get on with our beer unless you come to our assistance."
"Step into the parlor, sir," she said, smiling, "and I'll see how much we've got. I think you are the gentleman who fought the gypsies. You've hurt your arm, I see."
"Yes, a great nuisance," he answered cheerily; "and that reminds me of my other request. I want some one to write for me an hour or two every day. Mrs. Benbow mentioned your daughter, the young lady who came to us on the white horse yesterday."
He was going to add: "The young lady who wishes to go out into the world;" but he checked himself, guessing by instinct that the young lady and her mother had probably very little in common.
"Perhaps, though," he said, "I take a liberty in making the suggestion. If so, you have only to reprove me, and that is the end of it."
"Oh, I daresay she'd like to write for you," said Mrs. Hammond, "if she can be spared from the butter and the fowls. She likes books and pen and paper. They're things as I don't favor."
"No," said Hieronymus, suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of his own littleness; "you are occupied with other more useful matters."
"Yes, indeed," rejoined Mrs. Hammond fervently. "Well, if you'll be seated, I'll send Joan to you, and I'll see about the barm."
Hieronymus settled down in an old chair, and took a glance at the comfortable paneled room. There was every appearance of ease about the Malt-House Farm, and yet Farmer Hammond and his wife toiled incessantly from morning to evening, exacting continual labor from their daughter too. There was a good deal of brass-work in the parlor; it was kept spotlessly bright.
In a few minutes Joan came in. She carried the jar.
"I have filled the jar with barm," she said, without any preliminaries. "One of the men can take it back if you like."
"Oh no, thank you," he said cheerily, looking at her with some interest. "It came in the perambulator; it can return in the same conveyance."
She bent over the table, leaning against the jar. She smiled at his words, and the angry look of resentfulness, which seemed to be her habitual expression, gave way to a more pleasing one. Joan was not good-looking, but her face was decidedly interesting. She was of middle stature, slight but strong; not the typical country girl with rosy cheeks, but pale, though not unhealthy. She was dark of complexion; soft brown hair, over which she seemed to have no control, was done into a confused mass at the back, untidy, but pleasing. Her forehead was not interfered with; you might see it for yourself, and note the great bumps which those rogues of phrenologists delight to finger. She carried her head proudly, and from certain determined jerks which she gave to it you might judge of her decided character. She was dressed in a dark gown, and wore an apron of coarse linen. At the most she was nineteen years of age. Hieronymus just glanced at her, and could not help comparing her with her mother.
"Well," he said pleasantly, "and now, having settled the affairs of the Green Dragon, I proceed to my own. Will you come and be my scribbler for a few days? Or if you wish for a grander title, will you act as my amanuensis? I am sadly in need of a little help. I have found out that you can help me."
"I don't know whether you could read my writing," she said shyly.
"That does not matter in the least," he answered. "I shan't have to read it. Some one else will."
"My spelling is not faultless," she said.
"Also a trifle!" he replied. "Spelling, like every other virtue, is a relative thing, depending largely on the character of the individual. Have you any other objection?"
She shook her head, and smiled brightly at him.
"I should like to write for you," she said, "if only I could do it well enough."
"I am sure of that," he answered kindly. "Mrs. Benbow tells me you are a young lady who does good work. I admire that beyond everything. You fatten up the poultry well, you make butter and pastry well-shouldn't I just like to taste it! And I am sure you have cleaned this brass-work."
"Yes," she said, "when I'm tired of every one and everything, I go and rub up the brasses until they are spotless. When I am utterly weary of the whole concern, and just burning to get away from this stupid little village, I polish the candlesticks and handles until my arms are worn out. I had a good turn at it yesterday."
"Was yesterday a bad day with you, then?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered. "When I was riding the old white horse yesterday, I just felt that I could go on riding, riding forever. But she is such a slow coach. She won't go quickly!"
"No, I should think you could walk more quickly," said Hieronymus. "Your legs would take you out into the world more swiftly than that old white horse. And being clear of this little village, and being out in the great world, what do you want to do?"
"To learn!" she cried; "to learn to know something about life, and to get to have other interests: something great and big, something worth wearing one's strength away for." Then she stopped suddenly. "What a goose I am!" she said, turning away half ashamed.
"Something great and big," he repeated. "Cynics would tell you that you have a weary quest before you. But I think it is very easy to find something great and big. Only it all depends on the strength of your telescope. You must order the best kind, and unfortunately one can't afford the best kind when one is very young. You have to pay for your telescope, not with money, but with years. But when at last it comes into your possession-ah, how it alters the look of things!"
He paused a moment, as though lost in thought; and then, with the brightness so characteristic of him, he added:
"Well, I must be going home to my humble duties at the Green Dragon, and you, no doubt, have to return to your task of feeding up the poultry for the market. When is market-day at Church Stretton?"
"On Friday," she answered.
"That is the day I have to send off some of my writing," he said; "my market-day, also, you see."
"Are you a poet?" she asked timidly.
"No," he answered, smiling at her; "I am that poor creature, an historian: one of those restless persons who furridge among the annals of the past."
"Oh," she said enthusiastically, "I have always cared more about history than anything else!"
"Well, then, if you come to-morrow to the Green Dragon at eleven o'clock," he said kindly, "you will have the privilege of writing history instead of reading it. And now I suppose I must hasten back to the tyranny of Queen Elizabeth. Can you lift that jar into the perambulator? You see I can't."
She hoisted it into the perambulator, and then stood at the gate, watching him as he pushed it patiently over the rough road.
CHAPTER IV
THE MAKING OF THE PASTRY
That same afternoon Mrs. Hammond put on her best things and drove in the dogcart to Minton, where Auntie Lloyd of the Tan-House Farm was giving a tea-party. Joan had refused to go. She had a profound contempt for these social gatherings, and Auntie Lloyd and she had no great love, the one for the other. Auntie Lloyd, who was regarded as the oracle of the family, summed Joan up in a few sentences:
"She's a wayward creature, with all her fads about books and book learning. I've no patience with her. Fowls and butter and such things have been good enough for us; why does she want to meddle with things which don't concern her? She's clever at her work, and diligent too. If it weren't for that, there'd be no abiding her."
Joan summed Auntie Lloyd up in a few words:
"Oh, she's Auntie Lloyd," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
So when her mother urged her to go to Minton to this tea-party, which was to be something special, Joan said:
"No, I don't care about going. Auntie Lloyd worries me to death. And what with her, and the rum in the tea, and those horrid crumpets, I'd far rather stay at home, and make pastry and read a book."
So she stayed. There was plenty of pastry in the larder, and there seemed no particular reason why she should add to the store. But she evidently thought differently about the matter, for she went into the kitchen and rolled up her sleeves and began her work.
"I hope this will be the best pastry I have ever made," she said to herself, as she prepared several jam-puffs and an open tart. "I should like him to taste my pastry. An historian. I wonder what we shall write about to-morrow."
She put the pastry into the oven, and sat lazily in the ingle, nursing her knees, and musing. She was thinking the whole time of Hieronymus, of his kind and genial manner, and his face with the iron-gray hair; she would remember him always, even if she never saw him again. Once or twice it crossed her mind that she had been foolish to speak so impatiently to him of her village life. He would just think her a silly, discontented girl, and nothing more. And yet it had seemed so natural to talk to him in that strain; she knew by instinct that he would understand, and he was the first she had ever met who would be likely to understand. The others-her father, her mother, David Ellis the exciseman, who was supposed to be fond of her, these and others in the neighborhood-what did they care about her desires to improve her mind, and widen out her life, and multiply her interests? She had been waiting for months, almost for years indeed, to speak openly to some one; she could not have let the chance go by, now that it had come to her.
The puffs meanwhile were forgotten. When at last she recollected them, she hastened to their rescue, and found she was only just in time. Two were burned; she placed the others in a dish, and threw the damaged ones on the table. As she did so the kitchen door opened, and the exciseman came in, and seeing the pastry, he exclaimed:
"Oh, Joan, making pastry! Then I'll test it!"
"You'll do nothing of the sort," she said half angrily, as she put her hands over the dish. "I won't have it touched. You can eat the burnt ones it you like."
"Not I," he answered. "I want the best. Why, Joan, what's the matter with you? You're downright cross to-day."
"I'm no different from usual," she said.
"Yes, you are," he said; "and what's more, you grow different every week."
"I grow more tired of this horrid little village and every one in it, if that's what you mean," she answered.
He had thrown his whip on the chair, and stood facing her. He was a prosperous man, much respected, and much liked for many miles round Little Stretton. It was an open secret that he loved Joan Hammond, the only question in the village being whether Joan would have him when the time came for him to propose to her. No girl in her senses would have been likely to refuse the exciseman; but then Joan was not in her senses, so that anything might be expected of her. At least such was the verdict of Auntie Lloyd, who regarded her niece with the strictest disapproval. Joan had always been more friendly with David than with any one else; and it was no doubt this friendliness, remarkable in one who kept habitually apart from others, which had encouraged David to go on hoping to win her, not by persuasion but by patience. He loved her, indeed he had always loved her; and in the old days, when he was a schoolboy and she was a little baby child, he had left his companions to go and play with his tiny girl-friend up at the Malt-House Farm. He had no sister of his own, and he liked to nurse and pet the querulous little creature who was always quiet in his arms. He could soothe her when no one else had any influence. But the years had come and gone, and they had grown apart; not he from her, but she from him. And now he stood in the kitchen of the old farm, reading in her very manner the answer to the question which he had not yet asked her. That question was always on his lips; how many times had he not said it aloud when he rode his horse over the country? But Joan was forbidding of late months, and especially of late weeks, and the exciseman had always told himself sadly that the right moment had not yet come. And to-day, also, it was not the right moment. A great sorrow seized him, for he longed to tell her that he loved her, and that he was yearning to make her happy. She should have books of her own; books, books, books; he had already bought a few volumes to form the beginning of her library. They were not well chosen, perhaps, but there they were, locked up in his private drawer. He was not learned, but he would learn for her sake. All this flashed through his mind as he stood before her. He looked at her face, and could not trace one single expression of kindliness or encouragement.
"Then I must go on waiting," he thought, and he stooped and picked up his whip.
"Good-bye, Joan," he said quietly.
The kitchen door swung on its hinges, and Joan was once more alone.
"An historian," she said to herself, as she took away the rolling-pin, and put the pastry into the larder. "I wonder what we shall write about to-morrow."
CHAPTER V
PASTRY AND PERSONAL MONARCHY
Joan sat in the parlor of the Green Dragon, waiting until Hieronymus had finished eating a third jam-puff, and could pronounce himself ready to begin dictating. A few papers were scattered about on the table, and Gamboge was curled up on the hearth-rug. Joan was radiant with pleasure, for this was her nearest approach to intellectuality; a new world had opened to her as though by magic. And she was radiant with another kind of pleasure: this was only the third time she had seen the historian, and each time she was the happier. It was at first a little shock to her sense of intellectual propriety that the scholar yonder could condescend to so trivial a matter as pastry; but then Hieronymus had his own way about him, which carried conviction in the end.
"Well," he said cheerily. "I think I am ready to begin. Dear me! What excellent pastry!"
Joan smiled, and dipped her pen in the ink.
"And to think that David nearly ate it!" she said to herself. And that was about the first time she had thought of him since yesterday.
Then the historian began. His language was simple and dignified, like the man himself. His subject was "An Introduction to the Personal Monarchy, which began with the reign of Henry VIII." Everything he said was crystal-clear. Moreover, he had that rare gift, the power of condensing and of suggesting too. He was nothing if not an impressionist. Joan had no difficulty in keeping pace with him, for he dictated slowly. After nearly two hours he left off, and gave a great sigh of relief.
"There now," he said, "that's enough for to-day." And he seemed just like a schoolboy released from lessons.
"Come, come," he added, as he looked over the manuscript. "I shall be quite proud to send that in to the printer. You would make a capital little secretary. You are so quiet and you don't scratch with your pen: qualities which are only too rare. Well, we shall be able to go on with this work, if you can spare the time and will oblige me. And we must make some arrangements about money matters."
"As for that," said Joan hastily, "it's such a change from the never-ending fowls and that everlasting butter."
"Of course it is," said Hieronymus, as he took his pipe from the mantel-shelf. "But all the same, we will be business-like. Besides, consider the advantage; you will be earning a little money with which you can either buy books to read, or fowls to fatten up. You can take your choice, you know."
"I should choose the books," she said, quite fiercely.
"How spiteful you are to those fowls!" he said.
"So would you be, if you had been looking after them all your life," Joan answered, still more fiercely.
"There is no doubt about you being a volcanic young lady," Hieronymus remarked thoughtfully. "But I understand. I was also a volcano once. I am now extinct. You will be extinct after a few years, and you will be thankful for the repose. But one has to go through a great many eruptions as preliminaries to peace."
"Any kind of experience is better than none at all," Joan said, more gently this time. "You can't think how I dread a life in which nothing happens. I want to have my days crammed full of interests and events. Then I shall learn something; but here-what can one learn? You should just see Auntie Lloyd, and be with her for a quarter of an hour. When you've seen her, you've seen the whole neighborhood. Oh, how I dislike her!"
Her tone of voice expressed so heartily her feelings about Auntie Lloyd that Hieronymus laughed, and Joan laughed too.
She had put on her bonnet, and stood ready to go home. The historian stroked Gamboge, put away his papers, and expressed himself inclined to accompany Joan part of the way.
He ran to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Benbow that he would not be long gone.
"Dinner won't be ready for quite an hour," she said, "as the butcher came so late. But here is a cup of beef-tea for you. You look rather tired."
"I've had such a lot of pastry," Hieronymus pleaded, and he turned to Mr. Benbow, who had just come into the kitchen followed by his faithful collie. "I don't feel as though I could manage the beef-tea."
"It's no use kicking over the traces," said Mr. Benbow, laughing. "I've found that out long ago. Sarah is a tyrant."
But it was evidently a tyranny which suited him very well, for there seemed to be a kind of settled happiness between the host and hostess of the Green Dragon. Some such thought passed through Hieronymus' mind as he gulped down the beef-tea, and then started off happily with Joan.
"I like both the Benbows," he said to her. "And it is very soothing to be with people who are happy together. I'm cozily housed there, and not at all sorry to have had my plans altered by the gypsies; especially now that I can go on with my work so comfortably. My friends in Wales may wait for me as long as they choose."
Joan would have wished to tell him how glad she was that he was going to stay. But she just smiled happily. He was so bright himself that it was impossible not to be happy in his company.
"I'm so pleased I have done some dictating to-day," he said, as he plucked an autumn leaf and put it into his buttonhole. "And now I can enjoy myself all the more. You cannot think how I do enjoy the country. These hills are so wonderfully soothing. I never remember being in a place where the hills have given me such a sense of repose as here. Those words constantly recur to me:
'His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
(Though on its slopes men sow and reap).
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth His beloved sleep.'
"It's all so true, you know, and yonder arethe slopes cultivated by men. I am always thinking of these words here. They match with the hills and they match with my feelings."
"I have never thought about the hills in that way," she said.
"No," he answered kindly, "because you are not tired yet. But when you are tired, not with imaginary battlings, but with the real campaigns of life, then you will think about the dews falling softly on the hills."
"Are you tired, then?" she asked.
"I have been very tired," he answered simply.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes, and then he added: "You wished for knowledge, and here you are surrounded by opportunities for attaining to it."
"I have never found Auntie Lloyd a specially interesting subject for study," Joan said obstinately.
Hieronymus smiled.
"I was not thinking of Auntie Lloyd," he said. "I was thinking of all these beautiful hedges, these lanes with their countless treasures, and this stream with its bed of stones, and those hills yonder; all of them eloquent with the wonder of the earth's history. You are literally surrounded with the means of making your minds beautiful, you country people. And why don't you do it?"
Joan listened. This was new language to her.
Hieronymus continued:
"The sciences are here for you. They offer themselves to you, without stint, without measure. Nature opens her book to you. Have you ever tried to read it? From the things which fret and worry our souls, from the people who worry and fret us, from ourselves who worry and fret ourselves, we can at least turn to Nature. There we find our right place, a resting place of intense repose. There we lose that troublesome part of ourselves, our own sense of importance. Then we rest, and not until then.
"Why should you speak to me of rest?" the girl cried, her fund of patience and control coming suddenly to an end. "I don't want to rest. I want to live a full, rich life, crammed with interests. I want to learn about life itself, not about things. It is so absurd to talk to me of rest. You've had your term of unrest-you said so. I don't care about peace and repose! I don't-"
She left off as suddenly as she had begun, fearing to seem too ill-mannered.
"Of course you don't," he said gently, "and I'm a goose to think you should. No, you will have to go out into the world, and to learn for yourself that it is just the same there as everywhere: butter and cheese making, prize-winning and prize-losing, and very little satisfaction either over the winning or the losing; and a great many Auntie Lloyds, probably a good deal more trying than the Little Stretton Auntie Lloyd. Only, if I were you, I should not talk about it any more. I should just go. Saddle the white horse and go! Get your experiences, thick and quick. Then you will be glad to rest."
"Are you making fun of me?" she asked half suspiciously, for he had previously joked about the slow pace of the white horse.
"No," he answered, in his kind way; "why should I make fun of you? We cannot all be content to go on living a quiet life in a little village."
At that moment the exciseman passed by them on horseback. He raised his hat to Joan, and looked with some curiosity at Hieronymus. Joan colored. She remembered that she had not behaved kindly to him yesterday; and after all, he was David, David who had always been good to her, ever since she could remember.
"Who was that?" asked Hieronymus. "What a trim, nice-looking man!"
"He is David Ellis, the exciseman," Joan said, half reluctantly.
"I wonder when he is going to test the beer at the Green Dragon," said the historian anxiously. "I wouldn't miss that for anything. Will you ask him?"
Joan hesitated. Then she hastened on a few steps, and called "David!"
David turned in his saddle, and brought his horse to a standstill. He wondered what Joan would have to say to him.
"When are you going to test the beer at the Green Dragon?" she asked.
"Some time this afternoon," he answered. "Why do you want to know?"